The Guardian

Modelling shows moving towards a net zero emissions economy would unlock financial prospects in sectors including renewables and manufacturing

Australia could unlock an investment boom of $63bn over the next five years if it aligns its climate policies with a target of net zero emissions by 2050, according to new economic modelling.

The analysis, by the Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), finds the investment opportunity created by an orderly transition to a net zero emissions economy would reach hundreds of billions of dollars by 2050 across sectors including renewable energy, manufacturing, carbon sequestration and transport.

Tide went out for global economy in 2020 and just about everybody was caught skinny-dipping

Warren Buffett once quipped it was only when the tide went out that it was possible to see who had been swimming naked. The legendary investor had companies up to their eyeballs in debt in mind when he made that comment but it now has a wider significance. In 2020 the tide went out for the global economy and just about everybody was caught skinny-dipping.

Clearly, there is never a good time for a pandemic but the brutal reality is that the world was ill-prepared for the arrival of Covid-19 at the start of the year. Policymakers had turned a blind eye to problems that had been getting steadily worse for years. Weaknesses that ought to have been tackled were left unaddressed.

Charity says licensing system is needed to prevent ‘unacceptable’ damage to countryside, plus stricter enforcement of existing laws

The RSPB is demanding new regulations and better enforcement of existing laws to control the shooting of game birds in the UK. The charity made the call yesterday at its AGM after publishing a review that found self-regulation by the shooting community had failed to address the environmental impacts of the game bird industry.

Illegal killing of birds of prey, the use of poisonous lead ammunition, the burning of vegetation on peatlands and the release of 57 million game birds - mainly non-native pheasants and red-legged partridges - into the countryside each year are now causing unacceptable damage, the organisation claims.

Amid the lockdowns, the sounds and sights of birds reminded me, most of all, of the extent of our connections to one another

• This is part of a series of essays by Australian writers responding to the challenges of 2020

London midwinter, and I dream of black cockatoos. Dreams lacking vision, sonic dreams of startling intensity. At dawn the rusted-hinge sound of the cockatoos swerves away, revoked by the thin daylight.

I have been based out of the UK for several months. Having passed through a blue solstice into January, the news bulletins from Australia chronicle unprecedented fire fronts, razing tracts of the eastern seaboard to ash. Columns of smoke expunge the stars. I see that in only the barest elements of topography and geology will the landscapes I return to resemble the places I left.

William Perry Pendley says ‘I have the support of the president’ despite court ruling he is serving illegally as head of the Bureau of Land Management

A controversial environment chief in the Trump administration has said he has no intention of leaving his post after a US district court judge deemed his tenure and ongoing occupation of the position illegal.

William Perry Pendley, head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), said this week that the judge’s ruling “has no impact, no impact whatsoever”.

Fungi have long supported and enriched life on our planet. They must be protected as fiercely as animals and plants

As you read these words, fungi are changing the way that life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years. They are eating rock, making soil, digesting pollutants, nourishing and killing plants, surviving in space, inducing visions, producing food, making medicines, manipulating animal behaviour, and influencing the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Fungi make up one of life’s kingdoms – as broad and busy a category as “animals” or “plants” – and provide a key to understanding our planet. Yet fungi have received only a small fraction of the attention they deserve. The best estimate suggests that there are between 2.2m and 3.8m species of fungi on the Earth – as many as 10 times the estimated number of plant species – meaning that, at most, a mere 8% of all fungal species have been described. Of these, only 358 have had their conservation priority assessed on the IUCN red list of threatened species, compared with 76,000 species of animal and 44,000 species of plant. Fungi, in other words, represent a meagre 0.2% of our global conservation priorities.

Samples of pork and poultry showed high levels of salmonella and E coli in new study

Pork and poultry with “unacceptable” levels of salmonella and E coli are reaching supermarket shelves in the US, according to the preliminary findings of a study that may confirm the fears of campaigners currently fighting to ensure the UK’s agriculture bill will protect domestic food standards and consumers.

The agriculture bill 2019–21 will return to the House of Commons on Monday, and will include an amendment from the House of Lords calling for all food imports to be produced to domestic standards.

Count Us In urges actions such as eating local, making clothes last or buying an electric car

If a billion people around the world were to take a few small steps and make them into permanent lifestyle changes, global greenhouse gas emissions could be significantly reduced, a new campaign argues.

These actions can be as simple as eating local food, forgoing meat at some meals, and wearing clothes to last instead of throwing them away after a few outings.

The pick of the world’s best flora and fauna photos, including a ‘most wanted’ bear and a lost elephant seal

£2bn scheme risks becoming ‘postcode lottery’ without government action, says expert

Householders trying to apply for the government’s £5,000 Green Homes Grants to make energy improvements have described how it is nearly impossible to find an accredited installer to do the work.

Homeowners in Cornwall have been pointed towards installers as far away as Scotland, Manchester and south Wales – who understandably, are not interested in quoting for their work.

Survey comes as ‘ritual slaughter’ legal case moves through European courts and Polish government proposes restrictions

Nine out of 10 EU citizens want their governments to ban the slaughter of animals that have not been stunned, according to a poll published today.

The results of the survey, carried out for the animal welfare campaign group Eurogroup for Animals, will feed into a cross-Europe debate about so-called “ritual slaughter” – the killing of animals in line with rules of religions such as Judaism and Islam for kosher and halal meat, respectively.

Clean energy and sustainable food supplies will be the planet’s most pressing issues over the next 30 years

“Experts” have had a raised profile during the Covid-19 pandemic, standing – albeit somewhat embarrassed – alongside Boris Johnson during his press conferences. In coping with health-related matters, scientific advice is crucial. We will also need optimally applied science in meeting other global challenges: developing affordable clean energy, feeding the world and preserving the environment.

The UK has for centuries punched above its weight in science and invention. It’s crucial to sustain our standing in a more competitive world: if we don’t get smarter, we’ll get poorer. Enough of our brightest and best must opt for science, engineering and technology, as millions do each year in east Asia.

Increasing numbers of people are discovering the pleasures of the turning of the seasons

The path above the pool garden at Knightshayes in Devon is one of the best vantage points on the estate to take in the colours.

As October marches on, the reds, yellows, purples and russets are beginning to deepen in hue and, when the clouds roll away, they gleam in the sunshine.

In focusing on targets, activists from rich countries risk putting metrics above the lives of vulnerable people

The dissonance is enough to make me uninstall Twitter from my phone. Maybe it’s compassion fatigue, maybe it’s 2020. But if I’m honest with myself, it’s a world-sized rift in how we perceive the climate emergency on the different timelines I doom-scroll. On one feed, everyone – American or not – is forced to tune in to each candidate’s climate policy because the US’s electoral fate is inextricably linked to the future of the planet. On another feed from back home in India, 40 new coalmines in the last great sal forests are being served up to any bidder who’ll take them, while civil rights activists from a different era of environmental organising languish in jail, their health deteriorating.

We’re at an inflection point in climate politics, where some governments are readying 30- and 40-year carbon-neutral plans and others are looking to coast into the next decade with pledges that are already five years old. Meanwhile people who have always suffered are contending with the fallout of inaction in the here and now. We need to align these two timelines and to broaden our definition of climate justice, if we are to achieve any measure of justice for the most vulnerable. But in order to do this, we must accept that climate politics are not so black and white any more.

Msrine experts exasperated by ‘disturbing nature and tone of the hearings’ in ‘a shameless misuse of the parliamentary process’

Coalition senators have criticised scientists and misrepresented evidence given by Australia’s main marine science agency at the close of a “politically motivated” Senate inquiry looking at water quality on the Great Barrier Reef, scientists claim.

More than a year after the Coalition-backed inquiry was launched, a final report was released in parliament on Thursday evening that backed the links between farm runoff – water from farms that flows into the ocean – and impacts on the health of the Great Barrier Reef, but called for better relations with farmers.

By reporting on issues across the world affecting the climate crisis the media can influence change

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“Will this story make a difference?”

It’s a question journalists ask themselves all the time. The answer is rarely clearcut, and there is no shortage of stories that barely make a ripple. But there have been a number of occasions in recent years on the Guardian’s environment desk when the answer has been a resounding yes.

Council is latest to push for bathing status for a stretch of river in order to protect it

Oxford has become the latest area to push for bathing water status for an area of river in an attempt to stop Thames Water discharging raw sewage into it.

The city council has backed a motion to apply for a section of the River Thames to become a bathing water area, akin to the status granted to coastal waters in the UK. The status drives up the standards of waterways. Currently no English river qualifies as bathing water, but the designation applies to more than 600 beaches and lakes.

The Royal Society of Biology has released the shortlisted entries and winners for its Photographer of the Year and Young Photographer of the Year competition. This year’s theme was Our Changing World

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Vessels spent 200,000 hours in 2019 bottom trawling or dredging the seabed in protected areas set up to safeguard vital ecosystems

More than 97% of British marine protected areas, created to safeguard ocean habitats, are being dredged and bottom trawled, according to data shared with the Guardian.

Nearly a quarter of the UK’s territorial waters are covered by MPAs, set up to protect vital ecosystems and species, including harbour porpoises and dolphins. This network of parks is a symbol of the government’s “world leading” target to protect 30% of ocean biodiversity by 2030.